Research Paper on "Teenager and Cosmetic Surgery"

Research Paper 4 pages (1316 words) Sources: 7

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Cosmetic Surgery for Teenagers

One of the many advances in modern healthcare is the ability of surgeons to alter the human body (and facial features) for purely cosmetic purposes. Cosmetic surgery has grown steadily in popularity in the last several decades to the point that procedures that were once relatively rare and mainly sought by professional entertainers and by individuals with serious disfigurement from injuries or congenital defects are now so routine that thousands of high school-age students request them, often as graduation gifts. Today, it is not at all unusual for teenage girls to undergo liposuction and breast augmentation while they are still so young that their parents must sign consent forms in order for the procedures to be performed legally. That raises serious concerns, particularly on the part of well-meaning parents because of the inherent risks involved and even more so because of the questionable sources of motivation for these desires.

Conceptualizing the Respective Risks and Benefits of Cosmetic Surgery

As is the case with all surgeries, cosmetic surgical procedures are associated with significant potential risks (Zuckerman & Abraham, 2008). Some of those risks include severe hemorrhaging during or after the procedure, nerve damage from accidental disruption of severing of nerve tissues, and serious (even potentially life threatening) post-surgical infections (Zuckerman & Abraham, 2008). While the relative risk of those complications are small for each individual patient, in the aggregate, virtually all of those possible complications will materialize thousands of times annually among the entire patient population undergoing all types of surgery, including elective surgery such as cosmetic procedures (Pitts-Taylor, 2007).

Most of those actual instances of complications are never known to patients contemplating cosmetic surgery and they often fail to consider the true risks that could actually materialize because every patient believes that he or she will not be among the relatively small number of patients who are harmed or even killed every year by their choice to undergo unnecessary cosmetic surgery. In 2007, the issue made national headlines after the mother of Hip-Hop artist Kanye West's mother died from serious complications following her liposuction surgery (Lite & Dillon, 2007; News Medical.Net, 2007). Naturally, the prudent approach to cosmetic surgery is to balance these potential risks with the supposed benefits of these procedures.

In considering the benefits of cosmetic surgery, it is conceptually difficult to distinguish procedures that are sufficiently beneficial to warrant the respective risks associate with them from those that are not. In principle, one workable approach would be to consider whether or not the cosmetic feature being considered for change is one that is legitimately interfering with the quality of life of the individual or one that is much more superficial. An example of the former might be a conspicuous deformity that is not necessarily a cause of physical dysfunction but that is an understandable source of social anxiety capable of being ameliorated by a cosmetic procedure, such as a prominent birth mark on the face or a so-called "hair lip." Meanwhile, an example of the latter would be breast augmentation intended to increase a B-cup to a C. Or D-cup or liposuction on a patient who is not at all overweight but merely self-conscious about a small fat deposit in a specific area of the body. On one hand, neither of these types of procedures is medically "necessary"; on the other hand, there is a fundamental difference between correcting an understandable source of social anxiety from a cosmetic deformity and the pursuit of physical "perfection" through cosmetic surgery (Levine, 2008; Tong, 2007).

The Relationship between Self-Esteem Issues and External Cosmetic Fixes

Volumes of empirical research as well as anecdotal data have documented the causal relationship between low self-esteem and obsessive concern over superficial appearance (Gerrig & Zimbardo, 2008). In principle, individuals with low self-esteem suffer from the perpetual perception that they are not good enough or attractive enough, very often completely irrespective of their qualities or actual level of physical attractiveness.… READ MORE

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